Same-Sex Parents: A Statistical Snapshot

Education WeekApril 29, 2015

The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey was the first to collect detailed demographic data on both married and unmarried same-sex couples nationally, including information on same-sex couples raising children. The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law analyzed that data, along with information from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey. The institute estimates that, as of 2013:

Nearly 210,000 children under the age of 18 – almost 145,000 of them school-age – lived in some 122,000 households with same-sex parents.

A third of those children were being raised by married same-sex couples, and that proportion was even higher – just over half – in the District of Columbia and states that allowed same-sex marriage in 2013.